Mobius
by Pipsy
Summary: He fell through the Bifrost, fell apart through space and time. Nothing was as it had seemed. Neither was he.


All standard author's notes and disclaimers apply. See profile.

He lived it again, as he'd done so many times before. When had time and reality become so fractured? In his youth it had been a random occurrence, something he attributed to fancy or late nights or too much mead. It wasn't until he started to catch up to time that he began to understand that he'd always been living life out of order but, by then, he'd been thrown into a maelstrom in which everything he'd once been sure of had been rent from him and those terrible things he'd feared had mutated into something entirely unimaginable. It was hard to tell the glimpse from the actual event, the one so engrained in memory with confusion and the other lived in absolute turmoil, and he often didn't know what the truth was even in its most basic facet.

He never told anyone.

He couldn't say why he never breathed a word of the strange occurrences, only the deep fear and foreboding that accompanied every vestige of those glimpses. He doubted their reality, for one, but that was a trifling matter compared to his own uncertainty, the question he couldn't even confront of his own sanity. He dismissed the glimpses—the lapses—into mere dreams and illusions. For a while it even worked. It might have been better if it hadn't.

When he fell, he fell farther than either space or time could have allowed within their normal bounds. He fell not only through space and time, but through dimensions and realities; he fell through a hundred-thousand versions of himself, scattered through a thousand universes and times. When he landed, it was long, a slow gathering of himself on impact, like a coiled wire tumbling down steps and spooling back onto itself. His body was made whole long before his mind and those who had found him had regarded him as an enigma. It was months before enough of him was gathered that he was able to speak and interact with the world around him again, but he did so uncertainly, feeling a thin ledge beneath one foot and the other pulled by a fierce maelstrom of convoluted winds.

The people—simple villagers—asked who he was, but he couldn't answer. Not because he couldn't remember, but because he remembered too much, too many lives that collided and blended with little or no order. His name was sometimes one thing, sometimes another; his home world sometimes golden, sometimes frozen, sometimes a ship in an endless ocean of stars; even his family changed form. Blue giants, a motley crew of pirates, powerful nobles… He didn't know where to begin piecing himself together. His powers were the only constant in the numerous lives that filled his mind, running beneath his skin no matter its color, and he turned to them for solace, hoping to find in them the thread of truth that would guide him home.

In the end, it was nothing he did; the other lives simply faded into a dream-like memory, while his own life revealed itself through persistence. There were still overlaps where his life was similar to another but for a given event occurring differently or not at all. Effort was required to sort through those nuanced variations and he wasn't entirely sure even then, but he was making progress.

Then _he_ came.

No matter what Thanos would later claim, there had been more than enough resources on the world to support its population for hundreds of generations to come and the culling saved no one. Ships appeared, massive and full of warriors, and giant armored creatures that swam through the air in defiance of gravity blocked out the sky. There was no chance, no hope, for the small village, but Loki had fought all the same, striving to save those he could, to give them a chance to escape, although he didn't know if there was anywhere that would be safe from the terror raining down upon them.

He expected to die, to be killed in a glorious and noble battle that couldn't possibly be won but allowed others a chance of life. Instead, he'd been spared; when he had fallen and was waiting for the killing blow and closing his eyes to embrace his end with as much peace as such a moment could afford, a figure had appeared, a shadow across his face. When the blow didn't come and he opened his eyes to ascertain why, he'd found himself looking up at a man unlike the others; purple, square-jawed, an air of command draped about his shoulders. His eyes were a pale blue, but they were dark with thought as he looked down upon the beaten man at his feet, his lips pressed into a thin line. Some recognition must have sparked at last, because he suddenly smiled.

"Bind him and take him to my ship." he ordered the soldiers, turning away.

Loki was too surprised to register any relief or fight against the alarm he would have felt had his head not been bludgeoned into incoherency. Had he any notion of what awaited him, he might have taken those last few seconds before he was seized to try to raise his own arm against himself, to prevent an unimaginable nightmare that would strip him of his identity yet again. He would later think back on that moment, bloodied, broken, and memories shredded and warped, with regret that he hadn't even tried.

Yet not even the Titan could completely destroy him. In the deepest corners of his mind, nestled near his most absolute will, remained enough of Loki to subvert Thanos' plans. There was something wanted that would spell destruction if obtained; there was power already in possession that could devastate countless worlds; and there was a protector realm unable to operate because the paths had been closed. Loki's position was a weak one, but he was clever and could find strength even in the most desperate of situations. So he'd planned, manipulated, and executed his designs. When it was done, Thanos had been dealt a heavy blow and severely weakened.

Still, his own part had required killing and devastation, though not as great as would have been suffered without him, and he knew he wouldn't be believed even if he revealed the truth. Furthermore, Thanos was still a threat, especially to him now that he'd betrayed him, and his mind was still the victim of great turmoil incurred by the mind stone. He was hardly master of himself, despite that kernel that had remained defiant of the Titan, and he didn't know what to believe or who. So he was silent. And angry. And in pain.

He didn't know at what point—when or at what occurrence of which event—that reality in a coherent form ceased to matter to him. It might have been his mother's death, or when his father told him his birthright had been to die, or even long before amid the mayhem of battle on an alien world. It really didn't matter. At that point, nothing mattered but his own rage. It was all that existed, all that he was sure of.

"_Trust my rage."_

What more did he have to offer than that?

Did he die afterward? Sometimes he thought he did. He saw himself falling, a final sacrifice given to atone for his sins, his fathers' sins, and the sins of misunderstandings, life giving way for the sake of something beyond himself. But that was only one version. He also lived. He rose, reborn. Was it really him? Was it someone else who mistook themselves for that pitiful being who had seemingly found rest and redemption? In the end, he knew.

He was both, and he was neither.

Reality had folded in on itself, knotting everything he might have been in every life he might have lived and jumbled them together and spat back out something that was both more and less than the whole. When one receded, another took its place, conscious of everything that had befallen his predecessor but still a slightly different iteration of the same model. Was his consciousness merely passing from one vessel to another? Was some force beyond his understanding replicating the atoms that comprised his being at every crucial moment of ending? Was it something else? Some_one_ else?

He only knew that with every awakening, he felt a shift, some moment or event skipped over in his absence, something that had happened that was significant to him but he couldn't account for. And then there were the _knowings_, though he often didn't know what they really meant or what their purpose was. Just that he had to do something or make sure something came to pass, a feeling so strong resonating in every cell of his being that he couldn't begin to question it. He had done as the knowing required, often with a grin that concealed the gravity of his actions, to make a fool of onlookers. Of course, he was himself nearly as ignorant, save for the imperative importance of his deeds—or misdeeds, as was often the case.

So much doubting, guessing, striving for things ever just out of reach… and then it all suddenly coalesced. How brief was that understanding, coming at last in the briefest of moments, finding himself at the edge of the precipice that had marked so many of his lives. This was the reason for it all. It wasn't all merely chance. Design had been embedded in his life, making him a martyr in a greater purpose, through the fabric of space and time for the sake of just one reality's survival. He knew then that there had been others present in his life that he'd never realized, manipulating the physical world as well as the one that existed within him. Time had been undone, wounds unmade, knowledge implanted, directions given that lurked deep in his subconscious, and events manipulated to bring about this one outcome.

Losing, in order to win. Dying, in order to live.

"_The sun will shine on us again."_

How much he tried to confess, to atone for, to make peace with in those final moments. Thor might never understand, and certainly not until it was over, that he'd both contrived a path in shadows and fog for the greater good and also been at the mercy of plans he didn't understand. Thor might never understand that he'd been made of many parts, many lives, many selves, but Loki hoped he'd at least understand that there had always been more good in him than most had ever seen. He could go to rest in peace so long as his brother knew he was not the monster he had seemed…

The attack was futile but necessary for the ripple effects it would carry, a dagger conjured in his hand as he took a breath—his last before it was strangled from him—and the thousand different lives that had impeded on his own fled away to leave him with only himself and his own life, passing before him and reaching ahead into darkness he could not pierce. Then he struck, and was stopped. A hand about his throat, legs kicking the air. He stared into pale eyes that knew not the fault in the logic that colored their vision but, even as he was led deeper into the eternity of those depths, he felt his brother watching him, more acutely than the fingers pressing on his windpipe, more deeply than the pressure building to burst the blood vessels in his eyes. His brother was watching. He didn't know if there would be a tomorrow for him, even as he knew what was required of him, but he knew what he needed to tell his brother, the person he cared for most who still lived and who still had a part to play in what lay ahead.

Now that he'd done all that he could and only seconds were left to him, oblivion staring him down in the face of a Titan, he made his last defiance. And a promise. _"You will never be… a god."_

Something snapped, and there was blinding light and then darkness—there always was some combination of the two—and he hoped absently that Thor had understood. _You can beat him. You _will _beat him._ But everything was becoming far away now, and he wouldn't know anything with much certainty until later, when battles had been fought on multiple fronts and something unimaginable had occurred. When the sun had set and darkness took its place in the sky… dawn would break.

In the end, the sun would always shine. He didn't know how or when, never really had, though he'd done his best to play his part. But a new day would dawn, and he would feel it upon his face with his brother beside him, greeting them like a lost friend who'd only ever been waiting for the clouds to break.


End file.
